thoughts about learning…and other matters

Make Just One Change

I dunno. In this book, Make Just One Change, authors Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana try passionately to make a compelling case for their view that education can be transformed by making “just one change”: teaching students “to ask their own questions.” This is an appealing idea, as it is all too rare for students to ask important questions. (“How do I find the answer?” doesn’t count. “I don’t get it” especially doesn’t count, as it isn’t even a question.)

So why wasn’t I convinced? Maybe it’s because Weston, like other Lake Wobegon communities, is skewed so heavily toward high-achieving students. Maybe it’s because we have so much curriculum to go through. Maybe it’s because the method doesn’t really work so well in mathematics, although there are a couple of math examples in the book. Rothstein and Santana do provide a nice mixture of a concrete advice and big-picture formulation, but…but…it just didn’t add up for me. I started reading Make Just One Change with the intention of giving it a try in at least one of my classes, and now I reflect on the idea with no enthusiasm for going forward with it. I believe in inquiry, but I am not convinced that this approach is the right way for me to go about it — not in Weston, not in 2013 at any rate. If anyone else has read the book and wants to argue with me, please do so! I would like to be convinced that I’m wrong.

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About me

I have just completed my 20th year as a math teacher at Weston High School (the only public high school in Weston, MA, though sometimes it seems more like a private school). This is my 43rd year as a teacher altogether. I also teach at Harvard’s Crimson Summer Academy each summer (this will be the 14th!), and for 21 years I taught at the Saturday Course in Milton, MA. Until recently I served on the board of the Dorchester Historical Society.

I read, cook, and build my model railroad when I can. For some reason I’m left with less free time than would be ideal, but somehow I also manage to devote time to my wife, Barbara, and to our excessive number of cats.